Brutally Honest Rant - 03/14/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Tax Reform and Wealth Envy
Audio Transcripts
03/14/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

As we get closer and closer to April 15^th - otherwise known as “Tax Day”, when most Americans have to have their federal and state income tax forms sent out – I’m going to be spending some time talking about ways that we can make that day disappear once and for all. Because it really is annoying and aggravating for us to deal with this annual burden of filling out forms, collecting all of these receipts marking off how much money we DARED to make and reporting how much got taken away from us in taxes, and then HOPING that we’d get some of it back just so we could make ends meet! It is annoying, it is frustrating, and oh yeah, we really have NO IDEA how much is getting taken away from us in taxes. We have to actually PAY to buy software or to hire tax preparers to fill out all of this stuff for us, because there’s no way in hell we can figure this stuff out and do it right. And good luck for those of you who try! I mean, you think that computer programming is confusing? Try understanding the tax code! That’ll make binary code look like child’s play!

And as I reported a couple of weeks ago, we’re quickly coming to a point where we NEED to make some sort of significant change to our tax system, because this crap is NOT working! Ask the current head of the General Accounting Office if you don’t believe me! David Walker, the comptroller general of the GAO, has been sounding the alarm bells for quite some time now. The system cannot handle all of the promises that have been made by our elected grifters and shysters.

Now when that day comes – and I mean WHEN, not if, and we’re talking sooner rather than later – then two things are going to happen. The first is that we ARE going to break the promises made concerning pretty much every social program today and every promise made tomorrow. We simply will not have the money for them because we’ll be spending all of that money on the interest on those promises. The second thing that will happen is that WE, and I mean every single taxpaying American, will get HOSED in crippling-high taxes! If you think that you’re getting screwed over now, then you better start wondering about how you’re going to survive when you’re paying TWICE as much in taxes, or even THREE times as much! And imagine how that added tax burden will affect your cost of living! It’s not just less money in your paycheck, it’s more money that you’ll have to spend on food, on clothing, on the basic utilities that you take for granted today, and pretty much everything else going on now. How much we pay in taxes also has an effect on the economy.

And this isn’t MY nightmare scenario, folks… this COMES from the head of the GAO! I’m talking about someone whose only mission in life is to look at the REAL numbers with the federal government and to see where things are heading. He doesn’t like where things are going, and there are very few people in Washington D.C. who can find fault with it. That’s scary!

And there is only one way to prevent that nightmare scenario from happening. We HAVE to fundamentally change the tax system now. We can’t dabble with it; we can’t “tweak” it; and we certainly can’t make an adjustment here and an adjustment there and expect things to fix themselves. We missed the opportunity to do that maybe ten or twenty years ago. Now it’s too late. We need to scrap the whole damn thing and start fresh and come up with a tax system that is truly FAIR for EVERY American, not just “fair” for the politicians and certainly not just “fair” for the special interest groups.

Now I have read the FairTax Book. I understand its origins and what it can do. I’ve seen the numbers, and if it is implemented as spelled out in that book, then you would see an incredible influx of tax money, and, at the same time, some great economic incentives for both growth and for savings. We would have a tax system that would actually ENCOURAGE savings and ENCOURAGE success, and not punish them like the current system is doing.

But I’m really not here to talk about the FairTax idea this week. It’s an interesting system, and one that I will help explain in the weeks to come so that you can understand what it is and what it is not.

Right now, though, I want to talk about the number one thing that KILLS any kind of talk about tax reforms in this country… because we can’t even begin to talk about reforming the tax system without getting past THIS serious hurdle. We can come up with a dozen perfect new tax systems to replace the current one that could generate untold trillions in tax revenue and they wouldn’t mean a damn thing if we can’t get past this issue-killer.

And the name of this issue-killer is WEALTH ENVY! It is nothing less than our perverse HATRED of the fact that SOMEONE OTHER THAN OURSELVES is out there being more successful and making more money than us!

I’m serious about that, boys and girls! This is what literally KILLS any discussion on real tax reform in this country! It is our perverse FEAR and HATRED of rich people!

Oh, sure, we deny it. It’s not normal to admit to having a perverse hatred of anything. We don’t want to be known as haters. Haters are bad people, and we all see ourselves as the good guys.

But while we’re watching NBC’s “The Apprentice” and MTV’s “Cribs” and watching all the celebrity success stories and looking at all of that gaudy opulence being thrown in our faces, we can’t help but feel disgusted by it. We look at the gossip magazines and visit the stalkernazi websites and we watch people like Britney Spears slowly self-destruct and we actually feel GOOD because of it. They’re not our role models! They never WERE our role models! They are our sacrificial lambs being served up on our secret altars of hate and self-loathing. We WANT them to fail as role models! We WANT them to debase themselves. We WANT them to get drunk and spew chunks and flash body parts and get arrested just so we can feel better about ourselves. Then we can convince ourselves that being rich and successful isn’t as cracked up as we’ve all been brought up to believe it to be.

And then of course there are those who don’t self-destruct like we feel that they should. People who can’t help but succeed in life, no matter what it is. And if they’re doing something better than us then we feel that they must have done something illegal or something wrong to get there. In other words, they CHEATED! They cheated something or they cheated someone, because that’s the only way that we can accept the fact that they are more successful than us.

So we put the thought into our own heads that these people who are more successful than us should OWE us something because of it! They shouldn’t be more successful than us, and we can’t prove that they cheated or that they bent the rules to get to where they are now, but we still feel that they OWE us because of it!

THAT is wealth envy! That is the whole thing, stripped away of any pretenses and platitudes. If someone is more successful than us, then we feel that they didn’t EARN it, they certainly didn’t DESERVE it, and in all likelihood, they CHEATED to get there! And we feel that they must PAY for that!

Now along come our elected grifters and shysters… and they promise us that they can make those rich people pay the price for their success. They’ll do something to help us out as well, but more importantly, they’ll make the rich people SUFFER for being successful. Because WE KNOW that they don’t deserve that success! I mean, come on guys, the name “Paris Hilton” says it all, doesn’t it?

But what we DO NOT realize is that these same grifters and shysters are playing both sides here. They’re promising to make “the rich” pay, but then they’re turning around and giving them tax breaks and exemptions under the table. They’re going to the truly wealthy and saying “well, we have to come down hard on you folks for the sake of appearances, but don’t you worry; we’ll just give you an easy out from all of these troubles as long as it remains our little secret.” And they do just that. We don’t see all of the details of these little “tax reform tweaks”, do we? No we don’t! They’re supposed to make our lives easier, but somehow the rich keep on getting richer and the poor keep on getting poorer. And even I find it hard to continually explain or even defend it. That doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped trying, though.

Remember the so-called “energy policy” bill that the Bush Imperium touted in 2005? It was supposed to help us from getting screwed over by the oil companies. Instead it gave them huge tax breaks. Why? Because nobody in the peanut gallery bothered to read the fine print, that’s why!

I mean, come on guys… let’s look at some of the so-called “champions of the needy”, shall we? Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry, Hillary “The Banshee” Clinton… have you noticed how RICH these folks are? None of them have gotten any poorer through their own economic reengineering programs, have they? And they never WILL get any poorer! Because it is all just a SCAM, and they damn well know it! All they’re really doing is putting the squeeze on the Middle Class. The rich get a lot of breaks, the poor get a few breaks, and all that the rest of us get is more and more of the burden. And it has been getting systematically worse over the past few decades. It’s not just a Republican or Democrat thing. It’s Washington… PERIOD!

So now we gotta change the tax system, and now those same grifters and shysters are SCARED! They’re scared because they’ve created this great scam and they don’t want to see it end! It has given them power. It has kept them in office. It turned them into the personal best friends of just about every socioeconomic group out there… as long as they can keep those groups separated and pissed off at each other.

So what do they do? They play up on our wealth envy.

“Oh no,” they tell us, “We shouldn’t mess with the tax system like that! No, that will just put an UNDUE BURDEN on the poor! The POOR people couldn’t afford this kind of a tax system.”

No matter what the tax idea is, they’ll use the same lines. The same excuses. The same scapegoats.

“Oh and let’s not forget those hard-working families! Struggling mothers and fathers just trying to make ends meet. You’re just going to drive them into bankruptcy! You’re going to break up families and break the hearts of little children! And all for what? So a bunch of limousine-riding rich people can get more tax breaks and not pay their FAIR share of the taxes. That’s all that you’re doing! You’re just letting RICH people get away with not paying their FAIR share of the taxes and not fulfilling THEIR SOCIAL OBLIGATION to the rest of us hard-working Americans!”

That’s their line, folks, and they will swear by it on top of every holy book they can find. No matter what the plan is, no matter how better that plan would be for Americans, no matter if it really helps the poor and hurts the rich, our elected grifters and shysters will spin it to be something downright atrocious. Every plan, every program that detracts from the status quo is supposedly designed to hurt the poor and help the rich.

But what they will not tell you is that these very things are happening RIGHT NOW with the current tax system! And they can get away with it because we have no idea how much we’re really paying in taxes, and because we’re too blinded by our wealth envy to even CARE!

Now let’s get brutally honest here… we are NEVER going to get ourselves out of this problem if we do not get past this damned wealth envy of ours! As long as the politicians and their special interest friends can continue to lead us around by our unrealistic and terminally dysfunctional sense of what wealth is and how it is achieved, we will be cowered into letting the status quo go on indefinitely. We will continue to get hosed by the tax system, and we will continue to spiral into that financial doomsday scenario within the next ten years where we will ALL get hit with staggering high taxes.

We need to get over this damned wealth envy of ours. We need to admit that it exists in our minds, and then we need to put it in its proper perspective. We’re not going to get rid of it, but we can keep it under control and keep it in perspective. Because if we can’t keep it under control, then it controls us, and that is what has been going on with our tax system.

We need to ask ourselves one simple question: is your perverse desire to see rich people suffer worth losing every single penny that you will ever earn for the rest of your mundane existence? Because THAT is what is at stake here! We’re not talking about Bill Gates’ money. We’re not talking about Paris Hilton’s money. We’re not even talking about George W. Bush’s money. We’re talking about YOUR money, and how much of it could very well disappear in the next ten years if we don’t do something soon about this dysfunctional tax system.

Has that gotten your attention? Good, because it doesn’t get any easier from here.

(Computer – some timely things that you’ll just have to listen to hear them)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

It’s not easy keeping your wealth envy in check. Trust me, as a libertarian it’s difficult at times to balance my political views with that seething desire within me to see some kind of personal justice for the imbalances in this horror show this we call our world.

But then I keep this in mind… no matter what we’ve done to supposedly “balance” the playing field, those with influence and wealth will ALWAYS find a way to get around it. They will ALWAYS find a way to stay wealthy. The name of the game here is NOT to make them poor. The name of the game is come up with a way so that EVERYONE pays their truly fair share in taxes, no matter how much money they have or how much they bring in. You want in on the system? Then you pay your dues like everyone else.

Now we can get to work on coming up with ways to replace the current tax system.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production. All opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
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